Word: preening
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...range of the virtuosos he accompanies. His touch is perhaps the most melodic in jazz, and in improvisation a beguilingly simple rhythmic sense keeps his left hand engaged with the housework while his right hand goes downtown. In recording studios, where he is fondly known as "Father Flanagan," engineers preen on his performances because his easy handling of the piano avoids the percussive exaggerations that mar most jazz piano recordings...
...brutal hooks and the butchers inspect her expertly, as though she were a carcass too. She flutters to her manager (Dominique Davray), a hard-faced businesswoman who comforts her meticulously but unemotionally, as though smoothing a 500-franc note. She flies back to her gilded cage in time to preen and twitter for the man who keeps her for the same reasons he keeps a second car: convenience and ostentation. Her songwriters arrive, and the canary mechanically warbles a few love songs she has sung a hundred times before without a pulse of feeling; but suddenly now they crush...
...wants to kiss you good night in the lobby, you can almost feel all the eyes watching you. It's downright embarrassing." A high point of "lobby observing" (as it is known to the trade) comes when an unwary caller, thinking himself alone, begins to preen and scratch while waiting for the answering buzzer. One tenant regularly warns his caller over the intercom: "Smile, you're on Candid Camera...
...included in the FCC testimony was this directive issued by the Prate, Preen and Blough Agency for Blastwell, Inc., small-arms manufacturer: "Competitive methods of 'death' dealing, such as head-bashing, ax-hacking, plank-walking or feeding to soldier ants are prohibited on our private-eye show, Johnny Contusion. Not all actors need be armed, but where it seems 'natural,' Blastwell pistols should be worn. It is absolutely essential that all pistol shots hit their targets. 'Death' should be swift and sure, but on the other hand there should be no shots of messy...
Fresh from the Mint. Dulles resisted any temptation to preen. "There he sat," said one British diplomat, "listening to men put on record what he and everyone else who knows anything about the Soviets have known since 1920. But he never gave the slightest indication of boredom. He looked as though every word he heard had been freshly minted...